Science from Nature to your table (Sci-NURTURE) reflects how environmentally sustainable agriculture and food production play an important role in our daily life. We will demonstrate the scientific facts and developments in the human food chains (animal-based, plant-based, and seafood-based) from the very beginning stages in nature through our table. Students, kids, and citizens will go through the story of nature components becoming food on our table by practicing all levels with researchers. This will help increase awareness of the sustainability of natural resources in society. Participants will appreciate the importance of terms such as "sustainability", "water footprint" and "consumed energy". Public awareness for researchers and innovation activities is expected to increase when they become aware of the contribution of scientists in their daily life. The Sci-NURTURE will rely on a wide area of subjects that cover most of the missions and Green Deal issues by practicing and demonstrating those issues to the public. Since the Eastern part of the country is less developed as compared to other regions in the country, science parks and other attraction centers are almost non-existent in the province. The young generation and the kids in the region are eager to see novelties of science and they are longing for any kind of attraction. Having a science-related organization in the city will create huge excitement for the public. By presenting scientific developments in different fields, Sci-NURTURE will provide youth with a path for picking their future profession. Finally, Ataturk University has been a partner of very few EU projects since only a couple of researchers apply for EU funds. There is a hesitation in researchers to go through all steps of getting EU funds. We believe our project will be a bridge not only between society and scientists but also between EU and scientists in the region and it will encourage the researchers to apply for EU funds.

<< Objectives >>The main goal of this project is to develop 3 VET training programs (2 levels each) in the field of: poultry, cattle and pig farming. The programs aim to balance out the skill gaps in the animal breeding sector in North Macedonia and will provide the most recent knowledge and practices to: farmers, nutritionists, technicians and veterinarians (aged 20-45). At the same time it will foster diversity and will foster equal access to training opportunities to individuals from different backgrounds.<< Implementation >>Grinagro. Ataturk University and PR will cooperate together to design, implement, evaluate and finalise the training programs. Knowledge transfer will be organised aiming to equip the trainers with the skills and practices necessary to execute the program on a high quality manner. Online promotional activities along with 2 multiplier events will be organised to raise the awareness among the wider public and to attract the interest of the target audience and the key stakeholders in the sector.<< Results >>The end result of the project will be a “ready to launch” program and skilled trainers. The project will also result with a minimum of 21 trained individuals from diverse backgrounds who will implement their knowledge and skills in their working environment. An added value of the project will be a long-term partnership between the 2 partners as well as partnerships with the key local stakeholders essential in ensuring visibility of the program and faster reach to the target audience.

The legal arrangements made since 2012 in the criminal enforcement legislation in the Turkey, the scope and duty area of the probation services are continuously expanded due to two reasons. The first of these reasons is the excessive intensity of the prisons and the difficulty in responding to this intensity of the current capacity. The second is the idea of subjecting the provisions, which are also found in EU practices, to more humanitarian conditions and an execution concept based on rehabilitation. However, Turkish probation services, which have only 10-year history, do not have sufficient accumulation and infrastructure in their rehabilitation efforts. Considering the distress experienced by the long-term prisoners in the prison and the tendency of them to commit crimes again due to these troubles, it is imperative that good practices should be integrated in terms of the probation services towards the offenders of in the country, both psychologically and socially. The relationship between criminality and criminal person can be established through society. Prevention of recurrence of the crime is possible by removing the conditions. While the EU member states have struggled with this problem for a century, Turkey has been able to start this process for about ten years. Taking examples of applications from the countries that have entered into the process of developing models in advance will enable the country to cope with the problems it is experiencing more quickly. In order to transfer good practices and models, it will be possible for professionals to experience and examine these applications in situ. This project, with the partnership of Ataturk University and Erzurum Probation Directorate, Maze Partnership Ltd from England and Mittelhessischer Bildungsverband eV., aims to prevent recidivism by eliminating the psycho-social inadequacies of the offenders released from the prisons within the scope of probation and thus protecting the society against the suicide. Project meetings will be held in England, Germany and Turkey to realize the project purpose. Psycho-social works carried out for the employment of the offenders and the integration of the social life will be experienced on the site and the good practices will be exchanged between the countries in these activities where a total of 24 people, including practitioners, academicians, researchers and experts, will participate. The methodology of the project is generally based on empirical data to create a model. This methodology is based on inductive reasoning. Interview and observation notes will be taken from the partners during the project activities will be the data of the model. The data obtained in practice will be modeled according to the experience and conditions of the country. In this way the inductive process will be completed. At the end of these activities, a projectable model for the country will be developed from the knowledge and experience gained and project outputs. With this model through expansion activities, project purpose will be realized by presenting to the service of practitioners and policy makers at both local and national level. Project activities and outputs will have a positive impact in the professional and personal development of the participants; increasing the service quality of organizations; on the solution of the psycho-social problems of the target mass and on social life integration. These positive impacts will have long-term benefits in the creation of a safer society structure and the EU area.

The demand for the quality increase in higher education institutions is a current issue. The need for innovative teaching methods is declared as the Ministerial Goals by the European University Association (EUA). In the Ministerial Conference 2020, it is also planned for the presentation of these principles and best practice examples. Similarly, the need for enhancement in learning and teaching by revealing poor teaching performance of academic staff had been underlined in Trends 2015: Learning and Teaching in European Universities report published by EUA. Existing literature showed that the main indicator of students’ learning is effective classroom management skills of teachers (Emmer & Sabornie, 2015; Kunter et al. 2013; Seidel&Shavelson, 2007; Wang, Hartel, & Wahlberg, 1993). Controlling a classroom can be overwhelming also for academicians (Sherer, 1991). Especially, academicians that don’t have necessary teaching experience before starting teaching in the university, suffer from lack of experience in the first years of their careers. However, most of the studies focused on classroom management issues are at the pre-collegiate level (Luo, Bellows, & Grady, 2000). There is a knowledge gap in classroom management strategies for higher education classrooms. Therefore, Teaching in Higher education Effectively via Eye-tracking -THEE- project aims to explore in-class interactions in university classrooms to present classroom management strategies by using eye-tracking technology with a holistic perspective. It is expected that THEE project will answer the necessity of new teaching strategies announced by EUA. THEE project will also contribute to technology integration attempts to university classrooms. It is obvious that academicians are stakeholders of successful technology integration and understanding how they use technology in classrooms is necessary to create innovative teaching strategies. Interactions between academicians and technology will be also analyzed and a set of strategies to enhance technology integration into higher education classrooms will be presented within this project. The project has four intellectual outputs and five multiplier events. During the first three intellectual outputs, eye movement data about classroom interactions from three different Europe (Turkey, Italia, Lithuania) countries will be collected and analyzed in collaboration with P1 and P2. The last output O4 contains the preparation of e-learning contents and pilot test of the project with P5. In the pilot study, the e-learning contents will be used for the education of academicians. The pilot study of output O4 which are the results of A18 will be used for the education of academicians from P5- Atatürk University- Center for Teaching and Learning Enhancement. After being educated; the academicians’ eye movements, and behaviors (jests and mimics) before the activity will be compared with their eye movements after the activity. This will also be the evaluation of the overall project outputs. The last output O4 of the project will be disseminated by multiplier events in every participating country. Further dissemination will be realized from the project web site on the Internet. The development of the digital learning contents, project web site and hosting of those materials are in the Applicant’s responsibility. The outputs of the project; on-line course contents will be hosted on Bilgeis MOOC platform. Bilgeis.net is co-funded by the European Union and the Republic of Turkey. To reach a wider audience in Turkey, We conduct an association with The Council of Higher Education (YÖK). YÖK will have a role to the dissemination of the intellectual outputs of the project although it will not be formally partner of this project. Our Partner P6 UNICA is an institutional network of European universities and it has 51 university members from 31 different capitals of Europe combining over 160,000 university staff and 1.900,000 students. UNICA as a partner of this project will share outputs of this project with its members. At the end of the project, it is expected that the results of the project will be easily published in high impact journals and presented in high-quality conferences and on the Erasmus+ dissemination platform. Since the project is innovative in terms of several ways. First, the analysis of in-class interactions with eye-tracking technology is a novel practice in educational researches and practices (Yamamoto & Imai-Matsumura; 2013) and there is very limited research on this area. Second, the project differs from existing eye-tracking studies used to examine classroom- dynamics in terms of the varieties of interaction types that will be explored within the project. Third, exploring classrooms from different countries is another innovative way of this project. As a result, the project is innovative in overall it offers practical solutions to existing problems.(PS: References are given as a separate file)

The low success rates of students in science courses and the negative attitudes and perceptions towards these courses are frequently mentioned in the science education literature.As a solution of this problem,out of school environments can provide important contributions as a complementary tool in formal education.In this project,it is aimed to develop an out-of-school curriculum for teacher education programs by following these steps:(i)finding out about different out of school learning environments,approaches and resources used in countries where out-of-school education has been successfully conducted over years,(ii) acquire and possess high-quality skills, competences,knowledge and skills related to strategies,methods and techniques that can be used in out-of-school activities,(iii) collaborate with partners to construct scaffolds which will help us to develop an out-of-school curriculum,and(iv) test and refine the curriculum first in Hacettepe University (the applicant university)(v) translate and apply the curriculum in participant countries.The curriculum will consist of following aspects:interdisciplinary connections, STEM education,using mobile applications,virtual museums,augmented reality, assessment.Although in service and pre-service teachers (PSTs) know some out of school environments such as science centres,they have difficulty in planning how to follow a methodological way in these environments and learning how to use them as a complementary tool in their teaching.As a result, these kinds of trips are often an ordinary sight-recognition visits.To overcome these deficiencies,teacher education programs need a structured curriculum which will provide pre-service teachers opportunities to experience and implement out-of-school lesson plans.The goal of this curriculum is to combine the theoretical background with applied activities by creating on-site learning environments. The theoretical knowledge will be developed via intensive collaboration with the input emerged from national and international out of school practices and examples given by the teacher trainers and project experts.In order to support theory with practice,pre-service teachers will create learning environments by choosing one of the out-of-school learning environments (e.g. planetarium,museum,zoo, etc.)The project will start with a need analysis collecting input from different stakeholders (e.g. academicians, teacher educators from formal (private school [Sınav Koleji] and public schools [Etimesgut District National Education Directorate]), and informal institutions (Muğla BİLSEM). The need analysis will inform us what teacher educators, pre-service and in-service teachers expectations are from a new curriculum, what they believe that is important to focus on out-of-school learning.The project will be carried out by four program member countries (Germany, Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Turkey) and three associated partners from Turkey. As a result, a common training content will be developed with the participation of each member. In this process, each country will hold a meeting and prepare a visit to out of school learning environments in that country. During these visits,out of school practices will be experienced in the European dimension.These meeting will facilitate to establish the theoretical infrastructure of out-of-school curriculum, and the team members will have access to reliable sources of information.The project will produce two major outcomes:(1)Out-of-School Learning in European Countries as an ebook,(2) The out-of-school learning curriculum for teacher education programs.To measure the effectiveness of the project; the quality of the out-of-school learning environments developed by PSTs during the implementation of the newly developed curriculum will be analyzed. Additionally, we will have different assessments for PSTs to help us identify how their ideas about out-of-school learning developed.These assessment tools include interviews during the course, documentation which presents PSTs’ experiences during the course (e.g. pre-service teachers’ journals),field trip evaluation form, lesson plan evaluation rubric, and course evaluation survey. Totally 7 partners will organize appropriate dissemination activities and meetings with relevant institutions.At these meetings, outputs of the project will be discussed in detail and detailed analysis will be carried out along with stakeholders in all participant countries.This last meeting of the project will host an Out-of-School Learning Conference including invited paper and poster presentations.The purpose of this conference is providing an opportunity for researchers to make connections with the practitioners and enable dissemination of the curriculum and the ebook.The project will be followed up on the webpage after the project ends with an emphasis on how the curriculum will be applied in different universities to ensure dissemination.